The Three Graces

 Hello! How are you today? I hope you are doing well and hanging in there with everything going on! Have you found some good survival techniques? I listen to Jen Hatmaker’s “For the Love” podcast (her current series is For the Love of Black Lives and it is PHENOMENAL  and she always ends the podcast with a question from Barbara Brown Taylor: “What is saving your life right now?” Hopefully you’ve found something that is saving your life right now. Maybe it’s a new mac and cheese recipe (is it? You should share it!). Maybe it’s a show you’re binge-watching on Netflix or a daily phone call with a loved one. 

I’m not going to tell you how to save your life today, but I do want to share with you a philosophy that I’ve starting practicing when I lead virtual studies. I lead with what I call “The Three Graces” and I’ve realized that the Three Graces are as applicable to real life as they are to online bible study.

 

1)   Grace for the time. In online bible study, this means keeping my hour-long study to an hour. I honor people’s time, especially because I know what staring at a screen feels like after an hour. Outside of bible study, having grace for the time means remembering that people’s time is valuable. Your own time is valuable. We can swept up in plans and expectations, to-do lists and things that simply don’t give us life. Grace for the time means wondering if we are, in fact, doing too much. A workshop leader said to us once that when she gets too busy, her daughter will tell her to give someone else a chance to earn their way into heaven. Sometimes we work like we’re trying to earn our way into heaven. Take a breath. Take a break. Have some grace for your own time and remember to give someone else grace for their time, too (on the phone with a loved one? Give them your full attention! Have grace for their time). See also Sabbath.

2)   Grace for the questions. It’s easy to see how this might apply to bible study. Bible study often raises questions. Sometimes they are questions that I pose as the leader. Sometimes it’s questions that come out of the discussion or the reading. Sometimes we might roll our eyes at questions or be afraid to ask questions we ourselves have because we are afraid someone else will roll her eyes at us. Legit concern! But grace for the questions means we covenant with each other not to roll our eyes at questions. We allow questions. We do not call each other names (out loud OR in our heads!). We all have questions. Maybe you’ve heard the saying that the only dumb questions are the ones that don’t get asked. Even if you ask your question in private later, give yourself grace for the questions that are really making you curious or weighing on your heart. Give others that same grace. I hope you can see how this applies outside the bible study zoom meeting, too!

3)   Grace for the views. As I said in my sermon last week: there may be a coin shortage, but there will never be a shortage of opinions. I heard it said once that we can learn to use our opinions to be bridge-builders instead of wall-builders. Differing opinions are a thing. We all have them. Whether we’re in a bible study, a work meeting, a family gathering, at school, or out to coffee with a bestie, we will find that other opinions exist out there besides our own. Grace for the views means that we are each entitled to our opinions. You are allowed to have your views, just as I am allowed to have mine, and they don’t have to be the same. Can we disagree with grace? Can we disagree with each other and still like each other? Can you tell me you’re supporting so and so without telling me why I’m stupid for supporting someone else? Can I believe this about that without leading the conversation with why you are wrong? (Related, I wonder what a political ad campaign would look like if it was about what I believe instead of why the other person is a terrible choice…and I don’t mean “why I believe the other is a terrible choice.” I mean legit, “I believe in this, and so I support legislation that would…” I would really love to see more political ads that are like that.) Grace for the views is about allowing for conversation and assuming (if we’re too assume anything) that we might have a view, not the view.

 

The Three Graces work in bible study. They are a covenant we make with one another to honor our time together, to create a safe space for questions, and to create a safe place to express our own thoughts. The Three Graces could work in the world, too. I challenge you and encourage you to try and put these Three Graces into practice. See how they affect your relationships. See how they open you up to new ways of being in community, especially with being in community made up of people who are different from you. Having grace for each other can be a beautiful thing, just as Christ had (and has!) grace for us. 

 

 10Use whatever gift you’ve received for the good of one another so that you can show yourselves to be good stewards of God’s grace in all its varieties. 11 If you’re called upon to talk, speak as though God put the words in your mouth; if you’re called upon to serve others, serve as though you had the strength of God behind you. In these ways, God may be glorified in all you do through Jesus the Anointed, to whom belongs glory and power, now and forever. Amen (I Peter 4:10-11).

 

What do you think of the Three Graces? How have you seen them or experienced them put into practice? Share below!

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